Pages

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Golden Sour - Recipe & Brew Day

Brewery: Old North BrewingStyle: Mixed-Fermentation Sour BeerDate Brewed: 10.11.2015Well, I've finally got a real sour beer in the pipeline. Two actually.I managed to get my hands on Bootleg Biology's Sour Solera Blend late this summer, and was plotting what to brew with it. Then East Coast Yeast showed up online two weeks ago and I managed to snag a vial of BugCountry. I couldn't choose which one to start first! So I decided to brew a double batch.

Theoretically my system can make a double batch of beer, but I had never tried it. Now I know it can. Barely. Fermcap S saved my boil from being an unmitigated disaster. 5 drops and the dreaded huge hot break never happened, and all the wort stayed safely in the kettle.

This brew did show me a few problems in my process, which show up as really low efficiency. My actual mash efficiency was incredible! I managed 89% efficiency with a batch sparge! But I definitely have some problems elsewhere. My boil-off rate is really off and I ended up having to add water back to the boiling wort to correct for that, and I need to figure out some way to filter hop debris and hot and cold break from my kettle. The attempts at whirlpooling aren't cutting it, and this batch ended up with a ton of trub sitting in the bottom of the kettle. I ended up siphoning as little as possible out, but still getting some in order to be even close on my final volumes. I might have to install a hop blocker and a dip tube in my boil kettle.